Sarah Maldoror film season

She was far more than the director of Sambizanga. She was an activist for Black consciousness, a pioneer of African cinema, an uncompromising poet, a mother, playwright and agitator of consciences. Her camera sought not only to tell stories, but to move and transform.

In this retrospective — presented by her daughter, Annouchka de Andrade, and the result of painstaking restoration work — we discover her complete body of cinema: from the Soviet hospitals of L’Hôpital de Leningrad to the Algerian desert in Le passager du Tassili, by way of portraits of artists who look and are looked at. Every one of her shots is a political spark, a way of naming what has been silenced.

Screened between 11 and 25 June, this event is not merely a film retrospective, but an act of historical recovery. Because reclaiming Maldoror also means broadening the narrative of cinema, making it more plural, fairer and truer. A cinema that does not merely look at the world, but dares to change it.